CBC Lifestyle Journalist Becomes This Week’s Substack Hero ⇥ gawker.com

Sarah Hagi, Gawker:

Leaving a writing job in a huff to join the truth warriors of the newsletteratti has worked incredibly well for well-known journalists like former New York Times editor and columnist Bari Weiss, Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald, former New York Magazine writer Andrew Sullivan and Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias.

Usually, this approach only works well for people with name recognition, but one fellow Canadian has proved you don’t even need that to be hoisted up as a free speech warrior as long as you type the correct words in the correct order.

Tara Henley’s screed against the CBC’s editorial direction is almost transparently insincere. Our national broadcaster is a institution worth changing for the better, but Henley’s criticisms simply do not match the CBC’s actual output. I have seen CBC stories of everything she says it does not cover with some frequency.

There is nothing wrong with starting a newsletter or going indie. But the way some of these journalists and commentators carry on, you would think they are bravely publishing in the storm of a totalitarian dictatorship. That does not match the reality of journalists in the U.S. or Canada or the U.K. or the E.U. who are afforded broad rights and freedoms, as are the rest of us, and who have a wide choice of outlets and employers.

You started a blog. So did lots of other people. Stop making a big thing out of it.